"It would destroy her": The Question of Paige in The Americans

i still miss fx the americans

I have been thinking of Paige Jennings’ fate in The Americans. She once told her mother, Elizabeth, that she is not afraid to die for the cause. She was afraid of ending up alone, an arc that has been progressing ever since the series’ second season finale. This finale in particular isn’t exactly what you call groundbreaking but I liked it very much.

The Americans doesn't do explosive scenes or cliffhangers for their finales. They want their audience to contemplate the aftermath of the event. In Season 1, this event is the image of Paige going into the laundry room; a lesser show would reveal that she had found out the truth about Elizabeth and Philip being deepcover KGB agents. Yet she does not, and she will not for quite some time. But the damage is already done. Paige has begun to suspect her parents are not who she had thought they were, and this suspicion marks the permanent loss of her innocence. This suspicion gains even more traction in the second season premiere, when Paige opens the door to the master bedroom in the middle of the night, expecting to find her parents missing from the house. For a few seconds, the audience is led to believe that Paige's suspicions will be confirmed. What is confirmed, however, is that Elizabeth and Philip's marriage has become real. It is a bittersweet irony. Elizabeth and Philip are closer than ever. Despite their lies to everyone else, they are utterly truthful to one another. But their lies have carved an irreparable rift between them and their children.

The morning after, Elizabeth asks Paige: “Why would you open a closed door?”.

Paige replies: "Because I missed you."

This may not be the actual reason, but it is true. Paige misses her parents, or at least, the version of them before she opened that door and lost everything she once was. Paige cannot take back seeing her parents in love and the truth is, they are more loyal to each other than they are to their children — a fact that Paige bluntly tells Elizabeth even before she knew the truth about their occupations. In the series finale, Paige watches from a distance as Elizabeth and Philip exchange their real wedding rings. In that exact moment, she knows that she will not have a place in their life. The horror of Paige’s tragedy begins with her innocently opening that door — the seeds of distrust and suspicion have been sowed, and from that moment onwards, Paige no longer trusts anyone, not even Philip and Elizabeth.

All this brings us to the second season finale, when The Center orders Philip and Elizabeth to tell Paige the truth and recruit her as a KGB agent. The obvious answer for Philip is a flat-out rejection. We know that he has been falling apart from the weight of living a lie. Like any decent father, Philip does not want that for his child. But Elizabeth thinks differently. "It would destroy her," Philip says in response to Elizabeth entertaining the idea of telling their daughter the truth.

Elizabeth replies, "To be like us?"

The season ends right there.

The implications of Elizabeth's question are triple-fold. Would it destroy Paige to be a spy like her parents? Or would it be worse for Paige to live her life as an American, estranged from her heritage, a lie that Elizabeth and Philip are trapped in as undercover agents? Lastly, would it be so terrible for Paige to be like Elizabeth and Philip — Russian? What Elizabeth is telling Philip is that maybe it wouldn't be so terrible for their child to be their child. It is about leaving a legacy and it is also a kind of love that inheres in the hope that your child inherits all the best parts of you. Elizabeth doesn't think that being a Soviet woman was something to be ashamed of. She is proud of her background, and she wants Paige to be proud too. For the first time in years, Elizabeth is thinking of what it would mean for Paige to be her daughter, and not a product of forced circumstances. In Season 3, Elizabeth tells Philip that her mother didn't hesitate to send her away to serve their country. For the longest time, Elizabeth doubted her mother’s love. The fact that they are wrestling with the decision to bring Paige into the fold reveals something else both damning and heartwarming: they are no longer their parents. Their time together have changed them. Elizabeth is no longer alone. She knows what it means to be loved. And that love has changed how she sees her daughter.

But it had never occurred to Elizabeth and Philip that while they have each other, the same isn’t true for Paige. The pair coat the truth of their profession - the murder, the irreparable stain of guilt, the exhaustion - in more lies. They tell Paige about saving the world, a principle that aligns with Paige’s Christian beliefs. They don’t tell her that they are only alive because they have each other. Philip confesses that somewhere along the way he realised that can only see a normal life with Elizabeth in it. It doesn’t matter if they are burying bodies together. It doesn’t matter if he no longers want to do this job. If she is with him, that is his normal.

But Paige is not allowed to tell anyone anything. She ends up turning her pastor into an asset. She cannot understand why her crush on Stan’s son, Matthew, is dangerous. She doesn’t have any friends. Elizabeth and Philip go into her room and gives her the talk about sex, but the talk is a thinly veiled warning — tell Matthew anything, and we die. Philip and Elizabeth come up with more lies in order to make the truth slightly more palatable, and Paige knows it. The knowledge ruins her.

When Elizabeth brings Paige to meet her grandmother for the first time, all Paige sees is despair. She saw a lonely old woman who sent her daughter to a foreign country for an indefinite number of years. She saw her own mother destroyed by that estrangement. These images are why Paige tells Pastor Tim the truth. But even her relationship with him becomes a deadly game of cat and mouse. Everything closes in on her. So in the end, Paige abandons her faith. In the end, Paige ends up alone. Paige wasn’t destroyed because she was like Elizabeth and Philip. She was destroyed because she wasn’t like them.